As countries become more concerned with oil reserves, renewable energy and carbon footprints become a focus of attention. Grid power and/or local power networks attempt to address some of the concerns with renewable energy sources as well as changes in rates based on the demands for energy (also known as on-peak rates and off-peak rate). However, renewable energy sources are inherently unpredictable in their output. For example, wind energy is necessarily dependent on the wind speed and direction in some cases. Solar energy is influenced by the time of day and weather conditions. Also, rate changes between on-peak demand and off-peak demand have a limited effect on the overall demand for energy during peak or on-peak demand hours as the larger consumers are typically corporations that have a limited ability to vary their energy demands. Additionally, large scale renewable energy farms, such as wind turbine frames and large solar arrays are traditionally coupled to the grid power network remote from any particular residential or commercial center. Thus, problems with the traditional or conventional power grid disrupts the renewable energy power source in a manner similar to the disruption of any power.
For most industrial countries, refrigeration systems, which include high volume air conditioning (HVAC) systems and refrigeration systems, such as food storage systems, are among some of the larger consumers of power from the grid or local power network. The large electrical power demand is generally due to the compressor used to compress the working fluid.
In part, in view of the above, it is desirable to provide an energy storage canopy or system that stored electrical energy and refrigerant (sometimes referred to as thermal) energy using renewable sources and/or off-peak demand power to reduce the demand for energy at on-peak demand times.